We study the dynamics of supermassive black hole binaries embedded in circumbinary gaseous discs, with the SPH code Gadget-2. The sub-parsec binary (of total mass M and mass ratio q=1/3) has excavated a gap and transfers its angular momentum to the self--gravitating disc (M_disc=0.2 M). We explore the changes of the binary eccentricity e, by simulating a sequence of binary models that differ in the initial eccentricity e_0, only. In initially low-eccentric binaries, the eccentricity increases with time, while in high-eccentric binaries e declines, indicating the existence of a limiting eccentricity e_crit that is found to fall in the interval [0.6,0.8]. We also present an analytical interpretation for this saturation limit. An important consequence of the existence of e_crit is the detectability of a significant residual eccentricity e_LISA} by the proposed gravitational wave detector LISA. It is found that at the moment of entering the LISA frequency domain e_LISA ~ 10^{-3}-10^{-2}; a signature of its earlier coupling with the massive circumbinary disc. We also observe large periodic inflows across the gap, occurring on the binary and disc dynamical time scales rather than on the viscous time. These periodic changes in the accretion rate (with amplitudes up to ~100%, depending on the binary eccentricity) can be considered a fingerprint of eccentric sub-parsec binaries migrating inside a circumbinary disc

Context. Massive black hole binaries, formed in galaxy mergers, are expected to evolve in dense circumbinary discs. Understanding of the disc-binary coupled dynamics is vital to assess both the final fate of the system and its potentially observable features. Aims. Aimed at understanding the physical roots of the secular evolution of the binary, we study the interplay between gas accretion and gravity torques in changing the binary elements (semi-major axis and eccentricity) and its total angular momentum budget. We pay special attention to the gravity torques, by analysing their physical origin and location within the disc. Methods. We analysed three-dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of the evolution of initially quasi-circular massive black hole binaries (BHBs) residing in the central hollow (cavity) of massive self-gravitating circumbinary discs. We performed a set of simulations adopting different thermodynamics for the gas within the cavity and for the "numerical size" of the black holes. Results. We show that (i) the BHB eccentricity growth found in our previous work is a general result, independent of the accretion and the adopted thermodynamics; (ii) the semi-major axis decay depends not only on the gravity torques but also on their subtle interplay with the disc-binary angular momentum transfer due to accretion; (iii) the spectral structure of the gravity torques is predominately caused by disc edge overdensities and spiral arms developing in the body of the disc and, in general, does not reflect directly the period of the binary; (iv) the net gravity torque changes sign across the BHB corotation radius (positive inside vs negative outside) We quantify the relative importance of the two, which appear to depend on the thermodynamical properties of the instreaming gas, and which is crucial in assessing the disc-binary angular momentum transfer; (v) the net torque manifests as a purely kinematic (nonresonant) effect as it stems from the low density cavity, where the material flows in and out in highly eccentric orbits. Conclusions. Both accretion onto the black holes and the interaction with gas streams inside the cavity must be taken into account to assess the fate of the binary. Moreover, the total torque exerted by the disc affects the binary angular momentum by changing all the elements (mass, mass ratio, eccentricity, semimajor axis) of the black hole pair. Commonly used prescriptions equating tidal torque to semi-major axis shrinking might therefore be poor approximations for real astrophysical systems.

We demonstrate that very massive (>10^8\msun), cosmologically nearby (z<1) black hole binaries (MBHBs), which are primary targets for ongoing and upcoming pulsar timing arrays (PTAs), are particularly appealing multimessenger carriers. According to current models for massive black hole formation and evolution, the planned Square Kilometer Array (SKA) will collect gravitational wave signals from thousands of such massive systems, being able to individually resolve and locate in the sky several of them (maybe up to a hundred). By employing a standard model for the evolution of MBHBs in circumbinary discs, with the aid of dedicated numerical simulations, we characterize the gas-binary interplay, identifying possible electromagnetic signatures of the PTA sources. We concentrate our investigation on two particularly promising scenarios in the high energy domain, namely, the detection of X-ray periodic variability and of double broad K\alpha iron lines. Up to several hundreds of periodic X-ray sources with a flux >10^-13 erg s^-1 cm^-2 will be in the reach of upcoming X-ray observatories. Double relativistic K\alpha lines may be observable in a handful of low redshift (z<0.3) sources by proposed deep X-ray probes, such as Athena. (Abridged

Observations indicate that most massive galaxies contain a supermassive black hole, and theoretical studies suggest that when such galaxies have a major merger, the central black holes will form a binary and eventually coalesce. Here we discuss two spectral signatures of such binaries that may help distinguish them from ordinary active galactic nuclei. These signatures are expected when the mass ratio between the holes is not extreme and the system is fed by a circumbinary disk. One such signature is a notch in the thermal continuum that has been predicted by other authors; we point out that it should be accompanied by a spectral revival at shorter wavelengths and also discuss its dependence on binary properties such as mass, mass ratio, and separation. In particular, we note that the wavelength λ n at which the notch occurs depends on these three parameters in such a way as to make the number of systems displaying these notches ∝ λ 16/3 n ; longer wavelength searches are therefore strongly favored. A second signature, first discussed here, is hard X-ray emission with a Wien-like spectrum at a characteristic temperature ∼100 keV produced by Compton cooling of the shock generated when streams from the circumbinary disk hit the accretion disks around the individual black holes. We investigate the observability of both signatures. The hard X-ray signal may be particularly valuable as it can provide an indicator of black hole merger a few decades in advance of the event.

We present a new code for performing general‐relativistic radiation‐hydrodynamic simulations of accretion flows on to black holes. The radiation field is treated in the optically thick approximation, with the opacity contributed by the Thomson scattering and thermal bremsstrahlung. Our analysis concentrates on a detailed numerical investigation of hot (T∼ 1010 K) two‐dimensional, Bondi–Hoyle accretion flows with various Mach numbers. The asymptotic velocity is in the range v∞∼ (0.08–0.18)c, while the initial rest‐mass density is of the order of a few ρ∼ 10−12 g cm−3. We find significant differences with respect to purely hydrodynamical evolutions. In particular, once the system relaxes to a radiation‐pressure‐dominated regime, the accretion rates become about two orders of magnitude smaller than in the purely hydrodynamical case, remaining however super‐Eddington as well as the luminosities. Furthermore, when increasing the Mach number of the inflowing gas, the accretion rates become smaller because of the smaller cross‐section of the black hole, but the luminosities increase as a result of a stronger emission in the shocked regions. Overall, our approach provides the first self‐consistent calculation of the Bondi–Hoyle luminosity, most of which is emitted within r∼ 100M from the black hole, with typical values L/LEdd≃ 1–7, and corresponding energy efficiencies . The possibility of computing luminosities self‐consistently has also allowed us to compare with the bremsstrahlung luminosity often used in modelling the electromagnetic counterparts to supermassive black hole binaries, to find that in the optically thick regime these more crude estimates are about 20 times larger than our radiation‐hydrodynamic results.

We study the interplay between mass transfer, accretion and gravitational torques onto a black hole binary migrating in a self-gravitating, retrograde circumbinary disc. A direct comparison with an identical prograde disc shows that: (i) because of the absence of resonances, the cavity size is a factor a(1+e) smaller for retrograde discs; (ii) nonetheless the shrinkage of a circular binary semi-major axis a is identical in both cases; (iii) a circular binary in a retrograde disc remains circular while eccentric binaries grow more eccentric. For non-circular binaries, we measure the orbital decay rates and the eccentricity growth rates to be exponential as long as the binary orbits in the plane of its disc. Additionally, for these co-planar systems, we find that interaction (∼ non-zero torque) stems only from the cavity edge plus a(1+e) in the disc, i.e. for dynamical purposes, the disc can be treated as a annulus of small radial extent. We find that simple 'dust' models in which the binary-disc interaction is purely gravitational can account for all main numerical results, both for prograde and retrograde discs. Furthermore, we discuss the possibility of an instability occurring for highly eccentric binaries causing it to leave the disc plane, secularly tilt and converge to a prograde system. Our results suggest that there are two stable configurations for binaries in self-gravitating discs: the special circular retrograde case and an eccentric (e∼ 0.6) prograde configuration as a stable attractor.

We present the implementation of an implicit-explicit (IMEX) Runge-Kutta numerical scheme for general relativistic (GR) hydrodynamics coupled to an optically thick radiation field in two existing GR-(magneto)hydrodynamics codes. We argue that the necessity of such an improvement arises naturally in most astrophysically relevant regimes where the optical thickness is high as the equations become stiff. By performing several simple 1D tests, we verify the codes' new ability to deal with this stiffness and show consistency. Then, still in one spatial dimension, we compute a luminosity versus accretion rate diagram for the set-up of spherical accretion on to a Schwarzschild black hole and find good agreement with previous work which included more radiation processes than we currently have available. Lastly, we revisit the supersonic Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton (BHL) accretion in two dimensions where we can now present simulations of realistic temperatures, down to T ∼ 10 6 K or less. Here we find that radiation pressure plays an important role, but also that these highly dynamical set-ups push our approximate treatment towards the limit of physical applicability. The main features of radiation hydrodynamics BHL flows manifest as (i) an effective adiabatic index approaching γ eff ∼ 4/3; (ii) accretion rates two orders of magnitude lower than without radiation pressure, but still super-Eddington; (iii) luminosity estimates around the Eddington limit, hence with an overall radiative efficiency as small as η BHL ∼ 10 −2 ; (iv) strong departures from thermal equilibrium in shocked regions; (v) no appearance of the flip-flop instability. We conclude that the current optically thick approximation to the radiation transfer does give physically substantial improvements over the pure hydro also in set-ups departing from equilibrium, and, once accompanied by an optically thin treatment, is likely to provide a fundamental tool for investigating accretion flows in a large variety of astrophysical systems.The field of numerical relativistic hydrodynamics has recently seen much progress in treating astrophysical systems under more and more realistic conditions. Because of the large computational costs involved, the inclusion of multidimensional general relativistic radiation hydrodynamics (GR-RHD) has been postponed for a long time, with the remarkable exception of neutrino transport in the context of supernova simulations (see Lentz et al. 2012 and references therein). However, due to the increasing power of supercomputers, the situation has started changing significantly in the last few years, and the inclusion of a photon field is no longer regarded as a remote possibility.This delay has, however, not been due to the fact that dynamical radiation fields are not regarded as a main ingredient, rather it is the inherent difficulty of solving the radiation transfer equation. 1 The cooling time-scales of a dynamical fluid may easily vary over several orders of magnitude within the computational domain. This then leads to characteristic pr...

We outline the eccentricity evolution of sub-parsec massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) forming in galaxy mergers. In both stellar and gaseous environments, MBHBs are expected to grow large orbital eccentricities before they enter the gravitational wave (GW) observational domain. We re-visit the predicted eccentricities detectable by space based laser interferometers (as the proposed ELISA/NGO) for both environments. Close to coalescence, many MBHBs will still maintain detectable eccentricities, spanning a broad range from < 10 −5 up to ∼ < 0.5. Stellar and gas driven dynamics lead to distinct distributions, with the latter favoring larger eccentricities. At larger binary separations, when emitted GWs will be observed by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs), the expected eccentricities are usually quite large, in the range 0.01 − 0.7, which poses an important issue for signal modelling and detection algorithms. In this window, large eccentricities also have implications on proposed electromagnetic counterparts to the GW signal, which we briefly review.